Olav Toreson Beito (March 30, 1901 – September 28, 1989) was a Norwegian linguist and professor of Nordic studies at the

University of Oslo The University of Oslo (; ) is a public university, public research university located in Oslo, Norway. It is the List of oldest universities in continuous operation#Europe, oldest university in Norway. Originally named the Royal Frederick Univ ...

. Beito was born in

Øystre Slidre Øystre Slidre is a List of municipalities of Norway, municipality in Innlandet county, Norway. It is located in the Traditional districts of Norway, traditional district of Valdres. The administrative centre of the municipality is the village of ...

,Venås, Kjell. 2009. Beito, Olav T. In: Stammerjohann, Harro (ed.), ''Lexicon Grammaticorum: A Bio-Bibliographical Companion to the History of Linguistics'' p. 126. Tübingen: Max Niemeyer. the son of the farmer Thore Andreas Beito (1849–1937) and Marit Beito (1858–1932).''Norsk biografisk leksikon'': Olav T. Beito
He married Marit Eker in 1930. Beito earned his '' candidatus philologiæ'' degree in 1932 from the University of Oslo, and then taught at schools in

Fredrikstad Fredrikstad (; previously ''Frederiksstad''; literally "Fredrik's Town") is a List of cities in Norway, city and Municipalities of Norway, municipality in Østfold Counties of Norway, county, Norway. The administrative centre of the municipal ...

and

Oslo Oslo ( or ; ) is the capital and most populous city of Norway. It constitutes both a county and a municipality. The municipality of Oslo had a population of in 2022, while the city's greater urban area had a population of 1,064,235 in 2022 ...

. From 1936 to 1939 and in 1948 he taught at the University of Oslo. He received a doctorate in 1942 with a dissertation on ''r''-

declension In linguistics, declension (verb: ''to decline'') is the changing of the form of a word, generally to express its syntactic function in the sentence by way of an inflection. Declension may apply to nouns, pronouns, adjectives, adverbs, and det ...

Old Norse Old Norse, also referred to as Old Nordic or Old Scandinavian, was a stage of development of North Germanic languages, North Germanic dialects before their final divergence into separate Nordic languages. Old Norse was spoken by inhabitants ...

consonant stems. He taught Norwegian at the

University of Iceland The University of Iceland ( ) is a public research university in Reykjavík, Iceland, and the country's oldest and largest institution of higher education. Founded in 1911, it has grown steadily from a small civil servants' school to a modern co ...

from 1954 to 1955. He was appointed a

docent The term "docent" is derived from the Latin word , which is the third-person plural present active indicative of ('to teach, to lecture'). Becoming a docent is often referred to as habilitation or doctor of science and is an academic qualifi ...

in Nordic studies in 1957, and a professor in 1959. Beito published ''Norske sæternamn'' (Norwegian Mountain Dairy Farm Names) in 1949 for the Institute for Comparative Research in Human Culture; the work covered about 50,00 such names. His study of gender shifts in

Nynorsk Nynorsk (; ) is one of the two official written standards of the Norwegian language, the other being Bokmål. From 12 May 1885, it became the state-sanctioned version of Ivar Aasen's standard Norwegian language (''Landsmål''), parallel to the Da ...

determined the ratio between masculine, feminine, and neuter nouns. He edited a number of publications in the series ''Skrifter frå norsk målførearkiv'' (Texts from the Norwegian Dialect Archives) and published the collection ''Norske målføretekster'' (Norwegian Dialect Texts) in 1963, followed by the collection ''Artiklar og talar i utval'' (Selected Articles and Lectures) in 1979. His 1970 Nynorsk grammar (second edition 1986) was the first such work after the one written by

Ivar Aasen Ivar Andreas Aasen (; 5 August 1813 – 23 September 1896) was a Norwegian philologist, lexicographer, playwright, and poet. He is best known for having assembled one of the two official written versions of the Norwegian language, Nynorsk, from ...

. He resided at Jar and died in Oslo.

Distinctions

Beito was made a member of the

Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters The Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters (, DNVA) is a learned society based in Oslo, Norway. Its purpose is to support the advancement of science and scholarship in Norway. History The Royal Frederick University in Christiania was establis ...

in 1951.

Selected works

*''R-bøygning: etterrøknader i norsk formlære'' (R-Declension: An Investigation of Norwegian Morphology, 1942) *''Norske sæternamn'' (Norwegian Mountain Dairy Farm Names, 1949) *''Genusskifte i nynorsk'' (Gender Shifts in Nynorsk, 1954) *''Norske målføretekster'' (Norwegian Dialect Texts, 1963) *''Nynorsk grammatikk: Lyd- og ordlære'' (Nynorsk Grammar: Phonology and Vocabulary, 1970) *''Artiklar og talar i utval'' (Selected Articles and Lectures, 1979)

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Beito, Olav 1901 births 1989 deaths People from Valdres University of Oslo alumni Norwegian schoolteachers Norwegian expatriates in Iceland Academic staff of the University of Oslo Members of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters 20th-century Norwegian linguists